Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 24 April 2018
PayPal arrives for Samsung Pay users
In July, we announced a partnership with Samsung that would allow consumers to use PayPal as a payment method wherever Samsung Pay is accepted. These partnerships continue to provide PayPal users with the freedom to manage and move their money as they see fit.
Today, we have begun rolling out the ability for consumers to use PayPal within Samsung Pay and make purchases at the millions of retailers that accept Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay users can load their PayPal account with the debit card or bank account found in their PayPal Wallet for use in-store – all while continuing to earn Samsung Rewards points. It’s convenient for consumers, because Samsung Pay works with both NFC and MST—that is, it works almost anywhere you can swipe or tap a card.
Don’t worry – when you use your phone to pay in stores, PayPal doesn’t send your actual payment information to merchants. Instead we use a virtual account number leveraging tokenization to represent your account info – so your specific payment information isn’t shared with the merchant. In addition, Samsung Pay offers greater peace of mind for customers and merchants than plastic cards thanks to a multi-level approach to security that includes biometric authentication, tokenization of payment credentials and Samsung’s Knox security platform.
Clearstream acquires Swisscanto Funds Centre
Deutsche Börse Group’s post-trade services provider Clearstream is expanding its offering in the funds space by acquiring Swisscanto Funds Centre Ltd., London (SFCL), from Zürcher Kantonalbank.
A purchase agreement was signed on 23 April 2018. The transaction for a high double-digit million euro amount is expected to close within the third quarter of 2018, subject to approval of relevant authorities. For Deutsche Börse Group, the investment will be accretive in the first year.
The funds platform SFCL will continue to exist as a 100 percent subsidiary of Clearstream. Currently, SFCL is the UK wholly owned subsidiary of Swisscanto Holding Ltd, Zürich, a Zürcher Kantonalbank group company. This transaction will not affect the service for existing customers of SFCL on both investor and fund promoter side. All London-based employees of SFCL will be transferred to Clearstream.
eToro adds EOS to platform
eToro, the global trading and investment platform with over nine million users, has today added EOS onto its platform, bringing the total number of cryptocurrency assets available on the site to ten.
EOS is the token linked to one of the most powerful infrastructures for decentralized applications. EOS is a blockchain-based, decentralized system that enables the development, hosting, and execution of commercial-scale decentralized applications (dApps) on its platform.
The addition of EOS follows NEO and Stellar earlier this year and comes as investors increasingly turn their attention to altcoins, as they seek new investment opportunities and diversification for their portfolios. It will now be available on the eToro platform alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, XRP, Litecoin, Ethereum Classic, Dash, Stellar and NEO.
Cryptocurrency investors on eToro own the real underlying asset, with eToro acting as custodian. eToro users benefit from eToro’s verification procedures, security processes and established reputation within the crypto community.
EOS will soon also be added to eToro’s Crypto CopyFund, which uses CFDs to enable investors to diversify across all available cryptocurrencies (weighted by market cap) with just one click.
Yoni Assia, Co-founder and CEO at eToro, recently commented: “Already in 2018 we’ve seen attention shift away from mainstream cryptocurrencies and their market share is increasing all the time. In our view, this trend is only set to continue.
“We are constantly seeking to identify and assess new concepts as they emerge and we are committed to bringing the best crypto assets onto our platform for our users to invest in. We’re excited to have brought EOS onto the platform already this year and we look forward to seeing how the market develops in 2018 following a very successful 2017 for the crypto community.”
